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How I Research Art Shows – Part 2
Eureka! The Art Show Reviews site has a person, Julie Cottin, who is taking care of getting the reviews posted. That is really great news.
Before we get started lets replace the self fulfilling prophesy of “starving artist” with “successful artist”. Several years ago I read an article about working as an artist and the author made the comment that “hey, this is about food”. Wrong! This is about making a comfortable income, sending your kids to college, owning a home, saving for retirement and the rest of that stuff that people associate with working for someone else for a paycheck. To keep this in perspective, financial success is important to me as it opens up new avenues that I can explore with my art. If I don’t have money, I can’t buy the tools, leather, or whatever else is needed to move on.
At this point of your research you have a calendar print out with the shows in your geographic area of interest written in. Next we will begin the evaluation of the shows to separate those with the potential of meeting your financial goals from the duds. What are your overall financial goals and your financial goal for an individual show? I have a dollar amount of gross sales (total sales) that I want from the show(s) I do. Net profit is what you have left after all of your expenses. I track expenses, gross sales, net profit and other financial data in an Excel spread sheet.

I. Gleaning Data From the Review
In Art Show Review.com, if you scroll down and before the next listing begins, there is some small print including a bubble for COMMENTS ( X ) with X being the number of comments about the show that have been posted. I think it would be useful to make this more prominent on the site. Click on it, and you will get to the information the a reviewing artist has used to complete the review form, as well as comments from other artists.

A. Artist’s Medium
If the reviewer’s medium is the same as yours, that’s great. If not, you just have to live with it as I do because there are few reviewers who do leatherwork.

B. Year of Show Reviewed
The best information about a show is the most recent. There is no crystal ball that tells us that next year’s show will be as good as the latest one, but the review done this year will be the most current. If an older review is posted, it should be analyzed to see if there is a trend. Be careful about comparing results from different mediums, but learn what you can from the older reviews. The Review form asks for the most recent year the reviewer exhibited in the show and number of times the reviewer has done the show. Brackets are: 1st time, 2-3 times, 3-5 times, 5-10 times and 10+ times. If a reviewing artist has returned to this show several times, this can be a good sign.

C. Estimated Sales
I love this section because it is a direct measure of the potential for financial success at the show. Reviewers are asked if sales were <$500, $501-$1,000, $1001-$2000, $2001-$5000, $5001-$10,000, +$10,000, and “Rather not say”. This is not prying into anyone’s personal finances as these are gross sales. The net profits for artists can be all over the map including not making a dime on several thousand of gross sales. We all have different lifestyles when we do shows and therefore different expenses. Be sure to look down the review in the next section where SALES are rated.
Can the show you are researching meet your financial goals? Could the reviewer’s medium have had a direct effect on sales in the demographic of the show’s location? Even if the reviewer’s sales were low, could you develop a market for your work at this show and in its demographic? Demographics are important and they will be discussed in more detail later.

D. Number of Years Exhibited in Show
There is nothing like good sales to get an artist to go back to a show year after year. The duds tend to get culled. The greater number of years an artist has done a show and reported favorable, the more interest one might have in this show.

E. Opinion Section
In this section, Attendance, Location, Facilities, Ease of Participating, Sales and Overall are rated on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (great). The rankings are subjective and you have to look beyond the rankings to get solid data for the show.

F. Sales to Booth Fee Ratio
The ratio is an old parameter that is still used by some to evaluate shows. The ratio is described as “Poor” to “Great”. To add meaning to it you need to know the Booth Fee (with the jury fee?) from the previous section. The me, the descriptive adjectives mean: Poor, ratio <1 meaning sales were less than the fee(s); Okay, the ratio is somewhere between 1 an 5 meaning fees and a little profit were made; Good, ratio was between 5 and 10, meaning some money was made; and Great, meaning sales were >10 times booth fee. This parameter can be a little misleading if you don’t go back and look at the booth fee. A show described as “Great” with 10 times a $100 booth fee would not have been as good of a show described as “Good” 5 times a $400 booth fee.

G. Comment Section
Comments in this section about What Was Good, What Was Bad, and Advice to Other Artists are more typical of what you find elaborated upon in the Blog section of AFI. A reviewer can check off for linking to their Blog about the show.

In the next, and final section, how you can research shows for which no reviews have been written will be discussed.